´óÏó´«Ã½

Raising Hare is Chloe Dalton’s memoir of caring for an abandoned leveret – and how the bond that grows between them changes her perspective on life.

Lockdown leads Chloe away from her demanding London job as a political advisor and back to the countryside of her childhood, where she stumbles across a lone baby hare - defenceless on an open country road. Against her better judgment, she feels compelled to take the tiny creature in and give it a chance at survival.

In the weeks and months that follow, a bond grows between hare and human as Chloe cares for the animal and prepares for it to return to the wild - the outcome she had always planned. The story grants us a rare insight into the lives of these elusive creatures, once thriving in the UK and now increasingly dwindling as their habitats recede and man-made threats advance.

In this first episode, Dalton discovers the tiny creature that will set her life on a different course. Offering it a makeshift nest in her spare room and muddling through bottle feeds with kitten formula, she shelters the leveret as it grows.

Read by Lisa Faulkner
Produced and abridged by Jo Rowntree and Heather Dempsey
Sound Design by Dan King

A Loftus Media production for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4

Illustration by Denise Nestor

This is an EcoAudio certified production.